Bascially I need to completely ace my A levels and although I have been searching for various revision methods, I wanted to know how the students that aced their A levels revised. The problem also lies within the fact that there is new syllabuses for chemistry and biology, however I would love to know how previous students revised e.g did you revise smarter or longer?

There isn't any major changes to the syllabus, most if it is still the same. There is no 'perfect' way to revise, it's different from everyone, obviously.

As long as your dedicated and really want to ace it, if you're willing to put in the work and do, I don't see why you can't ace them

I.e. Just revise everyday all day, obviously take breaks in-between but keep them as short as possible so you don't start procrastinating. This works for me, others will disagree, like I said, you just need to find what works for you.

(Original post by fxb11)
Bascially I need to completely ace my A levels and although I have been searching for various revision methods, I wanted to know how the students that aced their A levels revised. The problem also lies within the fact that there is new syllabuses for chemistry and biology, however I would love to know how previous students revised e.g did you revise smarter or longer?

Make a revision schedule - I know it's boring advice but it honestly does help you set out your time well! Over the summer/at the beginning of the year you should schedule in time to do homework, and a bit of time to revise/make notes/consolidate your class notes, and then as it leads up to exams you should slot in more revision time.

So I just finished my second year, I did Biology, Maths and Psychology. Biology was my best subject and I'm predicted A* for that, got 93% UMS overall last year but the practical exam let me down the most. Predicted an A in Psychology and an A in maths although I struggled with maths this year and due to a lack of preparation I know I will have got a B.

It'll vary depending on your learning style but what I did was, for Biology and Psychology, I would listen in class and make a concise set of notes for the whole lesson, maybe on one sheet of paper, ofcourse if our teacher wanted us to fill anything in such as the booklets we had for Biology I would do that aswell, but I would mainly make sure I was understanding the content in lesson. This worked quite well for me because if I understand something it's less work revising it! Then I'd plan to (but wouldn't always get around to doing it) make a complete set of notes in the evening as soon as I could and I'd recommend you do that, look over what you've done and try and expand on it for an hour or so while you're learning the content.

With a subject like Biology it really helps to do past questions throughout the year, after completing a topic find all the questions on that topic and do them, maybe 3 questions at a time, mark them using the mark schemes as thoroughly as you can so you see where the marking points come from, but don't be too leniant either and give marks which aren't clearly stated in the way you've stated them. This is the best thing for biology I think, really hammering down on the questions and getting used to the terminology the examiner's use. But don't think by learning mark schemes you can slack on learning content, for every set of questions you do I would do an extra 20-30 minutes of reading on topics where you feel you could expand on further. This year in my exam there were quite a few questions which just hadn't come up before and so those who just learned mark schemes struggled, but if you knew content well enough it was okay.

For revising generally, I found it helpful to really utilise the college facilities and would use the library quite often to get work done. Don't be afraid to sacrifice socialising at break and dinner to get a bit of extra work done in the library. If you can find one or two people doing your subject who are quite good at it, revise with them, but not with people who will distract you! As well as past papers, textbooks etc.. I found watching video tutorials really helpful, sometimes a certain teacher's perspective never really fits with you so try an alternative through video tutorials or something.

I'll be honest, I'm quite lucky with the fact I can get away with doing less work than others and still doing well for myself because as I said, when I understand something it is less work for me to revise. This also meant that I left it quite late to really start going over content again and so for my second biology, because I felt so confident with biology, I left it so late to start going over content and had like a couple of days to check over everything and do a couple of papers, so I kinda struggled in that exam, mainly because I'd directed my focus more towards Psychology and Maths which I was struggling with throughout the year. So my biggest piece of sdvice would be, when you know your revision style, start working over the content a good couple of months before the exams atleast, going over everything and then maybe a week befpre your first exams start tailoring your revision to just past papers of a particular subject. The sooner you feel okay with the content and can start practising the better, the more papers you can complete and mark the better!

General ways of revising for me were:
1. Past papers + Mark schemes and examiner's reports (underated tool the reports are)
2. Video tutorials
3. Rewriting notes + highlighting content as I read it
4. Mind maps (though I despised them to start with they became really great to make and use as a plan for revision with Psychology)
5. Talking things over with peers and teachers, honestly one of the best things you can do! If you can explain it in words with clarity it's a good sign you know the content well enough fornan exam.

My biggest error was planning revision and leaving it until it was too late so that took time out of my past paper practise! Honestly there isn't much between an ABB student and an A*A*A student other than how they focus their revision and commit their time.